Pynchon's fat novel repudiated?

[umberto rossi]

In data 9 May 2004, verso le 9:02, Bekah si trovò a scrivere su Re: 
Pynchon's  fat novel repudiated?:

> I know  a few Europeans who have read Underworld and they did *not*
> like it. It was too American. It truly is a very American novel (not
> necessarily "The GAN"), and much of it is very New York.  It goes from
> a famous baseball game to massive consumerism and Cold War paranoia
> with Lenny Bruce and J. Edgar Hoover and the Texas Highway Killer and
> all sorts of good old-fashioned Amerikan things. I think it's hard for
> non-Americans (or even Americans under age 40) to connect with (if you
> will). 

D'youy really think so? Maybe you talked to the wrong Europeans. The 
US have been bombing us everyday with tons of Americana. Lenny Bruce 
is a film by Bob Fosse, isn't it? That's how we know he existed. As 
for Hoover, he's mentioned in so many US films and crime novels. Good 
old-fashioned Amerikan things get here via soaps, via serials, via 
cartoons, comics, flicks, books (US literature is the most translated 
into Italian), songs lyrics and whatever. Quantico is famous because 
of The Silence of the Lambs, the Bronx is the Bronx and that word is 
used here quite often. While I was in the Army, they called the wing 
of my barracks where cooks and truck driver slept "the Bronx wing". 
We had Cold War also in Italy, thank you very much, and Angleton is 
slowly becoming famous here.

You see, people outside the US get to know the US more and more 
because you keep exporting the US year after year. I guess the real 
problem with Underworld here is that it was published by the wrong 
publishing house, but that's another matter. Anyway, it's always very 
difficult to say (from your side of the pond) what is too American 
for foreigners. Some things are, undoubtedly, but many of them aren't 
any more...

umberto rossi
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